Category Archives: about being a nerd

So recently I’ve become obsessed with the awesome site www.listverse.com, which is amazing for a number of reasons. The first one being that it’s a site full of lists and I LOVE lists. The second is that it’s amazingly addictive and if I’m at work, it can take up a good couple of hours. Because I’m not working at work. That would be weird. Anyways, it inspired to create my very own list and maybe the bosses as Listverse will SEE my list and think I’m awesome and want to put it on their site! Oh em gee. It would be like I would be famous. There was something seriously wrong with the grammar in that sentence but I’m really not going to dwell on it.

Seriously, check Listverse out cos it’s interesting. Lists of the top 10 weird travel destinations. Top 10 gruesome ways to die. Top 10 facts that are actually wrong. Top 10 weird scenes in movies. Top 10 political prisoners. Etc etc. And you get to LEARN at the same time! What could be more fun.

This list is dedicated to the Buffy episodes that I can watch over and over. Many fans of Buffy will cite other episodes as being better, more technically correct, significant, etc. For example. The Body is widely recognised as one of the most sophisticated episodes. But let’s face it. It’s certainly not one I can watch a heap of times. BECAUSE IT’S SAD. Same goes for Conversations with Dead People. One word: Creepy. This is MY list of MY favourite episodes.

10. FOOL FOR LOVE

I always love a bit of history and backstory in Buffy and this episode had epic proportions of it. It also did a very fancy crossover with Angel, but I won’t go into it cos it will be confusing and this entire post is lost on non-Buffy watchers anyway.

This gets the Number 10 spot for the above scene where Spike gets all Billy Idol in New York and acquires his leather jacket.

ANGEL.TURNS.BAD. Need I say more? And check it out. His shirt is off. And it’s yum. And look, Buffy is all sad and shit cos she doesn’t understand why her True Love is being a meanie to her. IT’S COS HE HAS TURNED BAD BUFFY!

Poor geeky Xander has just been dumped on Valentine’s Day, so gets the help of Amy to make Cordelia fall back in love with him. Spell goes wrong, and every female in Sunnydale falls for him, including Buffy’s mum. Oh, and except for Cordelia. Highlights include Buffy’s technicolor tan.

So Willow is all depressed and annoying cos Oz has gone off to Nepal or the Himalayas or whatever to go ‘find himself’ and so she does some Magicks to get Oz to come back to her. But due to her karmic imbalance, or you know, she’s all stressy, the Magicks go wrong and all of a sudden Giles is blind, Xander’s a demon magnet and Spike and Buffy have decided they’re getting married. Comedy gold. Giles at his best.

This is a really hard one to cap as I think all the one-liners in it just make it beautiful. I think this was the first episode Joss (I LOVE YOU!) really turned Sunnydale upside down, which are always my favourite ones. As demonstrated by this list.

Cordelia makes a wish that Buffy had never come to Sunnydale, so enter a Sunnydale without Buffy. See picture: Vampires abound in the form of her bff’s. I remember really loving Buffy’s alternate universe scar across her lip in this episode, and wished I had my very own scar across my lip in weird self harm kinda way. Best finale ever.

This is cheating a little bit, cos it’s two episodes, but they have the same name so whatever. Easily the best fight between Buffy and Evil Slayer Faith. I especially like their matching but not matching leather pants. And Faith’s super squiggly evil looking knife. I tried to find a picture but all that was available were them in doll form, which I found a bit too creepy. The graduating class getting all pitchforky is pretty rad too. And the whole Angel biting Buffy thing is actually a bit hot. Which is weird.

Image from: andythesaint.wordpress.com (I just realised the site I stole this image from, (thanks Andy, you rock! I hope it’s okay I stole your picture. If not, please email me and I will feel like I have a fan!) has does the Top 25 episodes of Buffy. Go Andy! I am going to check it out. Though Andy, to be honest, I think letting you have 25 episodes is cheating a little bit, and much easier to do. Fine. If I was allowed 25, I would also include, in no particular order: Pangs, The Body, Doppelgangland, The Gift, Superstar – purely for the opening credits, School Hard, What’s My Line parts 1 and 2, Becoming parts 1 and 2.Phases, Lover’s Walk, and OH MY GOD I’m stopping there. How could you do 25? Far too much.

3. ONCE MORE, WITH FEELING

THEY ALL SING. Well, Willow tries and the rest of them sing. And very catchy, catchy songs too. Didn’t like Tara until this episode. She sold me with her saucy metaphors and cheeky eye dart as she spread herself under her ‘willow tree’. Oh, Tara. You minx.

This was originally my number one spot and I will explain why it got moved when I talk about my actual number one. Possibly the most frightening Buffy episode ever, with the possible exception of Killed By Death. (Did you SEE that demon guy with the eyeballs that stuck on kid’s foreheads and sucked out their lives? DOUBLE YOU TEE EFF!?) Anyways, Hush is rad for all sorts of technical reasons which are explained much more academically and succinctly on other sites that are not this one. It’s the whole thing of having NO dialogue for the majority of the episode. The highlights for me in this episode is clearly Giles’ slideshow. The lowlight is clearly Buffy’s retarded scream at the end.

Yes, this is my all time favourite Buffy episode for so many amazing reasons. It’s the one I can watch many, many times. I think what really sold me on this episode is it’s relationship to one two seasons later. In the scene above, Giles and Joyce are listening to Cream’s, Tale of Brave Ulysses, one of my all time favourite songs. Then, in the episode of The Body, two seasons later, there is a very small scene, with no dialogue, where you see Giles put on the same vinyl recording and listen to it with a glass of scotch as a tribute to Joyce. Or it may have been brandy. Whatever. Anyway, I didn’t even click to this until I was having a mega Buffy marathon run and managed to watch three seasons in about three days, and recognised the song. Oh Joss. You are my hero. You’re so SLY!

I would like to continue on the same theme as my last post which was: Teenagers Don’t Know Shit About History (or anything).*

For anonymities sake, let’s say I was chatting to ‘a’ teenager. Any will do. But this is a true story. And we started to talk about The Civil War. Pretty big war, no? I didn’t expect her to know the details (which was just as well really, because she sure as hell didn’t) however, I did expect her to know the basics of human nature. Which it turned out, was apparently ridiculously unrealistic of me.

So we’re chatting away, and I’m pulling out all the stuff I know from my extensive reading of Gone with the Wind and my studies of it thereafter, and I’m saying stuff like ‘the war had a lot of ramifications that we still see in society today’, and then realising I would have to dumb down ‘ramifications’, and so saying stuff like ‘people are still upset about the war’ and cringing about the utter inadequecies of that sentence.

But that sentence bought about this little gem:

“Um… like… who was upset? Like, the black people or the white people?”

“Well, both.”

At this point you could almost see the light bulb desperately flickering to alight in her head.

NO. WRONG. WELCOME TO WRONGTOWN PLEASE TAKE A SEAT NEXT TO THAT OTHER REALLY WRONG PERSON FROM WRONGONIA.

My brain actually melted a little bit.

*This is a radical interpretation of teenagers. I am aware that there are some quite awesome and knowledgeable ones out there.

Image from: http://dibblyfresh1.blogspot.com/ (which is, incidentally, an awesome blog, and I completely recommend checking it out if you read trashy YA lit as a kid. Especially The Babysitter’s Club. It’s rad.)